Larissa came back with a yogurt—Pam noticed it was, indeed, mixed berry—and a sandwich for herself, but she put the sandwich down without eating it and folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes didn’t quite meet Pam’s as she started to speak.
“So, I promised I’d tell you about me, and the first thing you need to know is that, well, Jim has been the best big brother to me. Just, the best. And I know I told you to tell me about Pam without Roy and Pam without Jim, but…it’s really important to me that you know that, well, Jim’s really important to me. We talk a lot. And because of that, I feel like I’m in a bit of a weird place right now.” She shifted in her seat. “See, I’ve been hearing about Pam Beesly for years now. Years. And I’d basically formed this idea of her—of you—in my head. And I’ll be honest with you, you weren’t good enough for my brother.” She raised her eyes to meet Pam’s, finally. “I don’t mean that I didn’t think you were pretty cool—I wasn’t lying earlier when I told you that—but everything Jim said about you screamed that you were basically content with your life, and that you were willing to let him be there for you but not to be there for him. And I knew somewhere inside me that that wasn’t fair, that I was hearing Jim’s side of things—and that I wasn’t even really hearing Jim’s side of things fairly, because I was hearing them with the ears of a little sister. Like, I know Jim can do wrong—I mean, he’s been really good to me, like I said. but you know, there’s no sister who doesn’t know that there are things, important things, her brother is like, totally terrible at—but I love him and I trust him and I’m really protective of him, so I knew I was hearing all of this from Jim’s perspective and then filtering out like 80% of the dumb shit he was doing.” She laughed softly. “And I do know my brother, and what you said about being reactive? He’s…passive. Like, he has his own opinions and his own thoughts, but when push comes to shove it takes a lot to get him to actually do anything about them. I guess you know that, but it really took until I actually met you to realize just how bad he was at it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you had no idea he was going to tell you he loved you.”
Pam shook her head. She was reeling, really reeling, and fighting an urge to back out of the room and run. Only the fact that she still had Jim’s hand in hers, and she really couldn’t bear to put it down, was keeping her in her seat. She’d been prepared to hear about Larissa’s life; to learn what she liked, how she thought—normal stuff. Even heavy stuff, if there was heavy stuff to learn, because she knew she’d thrown a lot this woman’s way in a very short amount of time. But she had been expecting nothing like what she’d just heard. She’d really expected Larissa not to say a thing about her, or Jim, or any of it, and hearing this? Was hard. Really hard. So she just nodded, because she couldn’t do anything more. She wasn’t worthy of Jim? She wasn’t there for Jim? It outraged her, but it also saddened her, because really, when had she been there for Jim? He’d never really seemed to need her to be there for him; it wasn’t his way. He was always there for her, until suddenly he wasn’t, and she’d felt his disappearance like a kick in the gut, but she’d never really thought about his angle of it. When had he needed her? Had those 27 seconds of silence on the Booze Cruise been a cry for help? In retrospect, it was obvious. Oh god, how much had he needed her to say something other than “I can’t”—do something more than nod when he asked if she was going to marry Roy? She’d been looking at it from her perspective—that “I can’t” wasn’t “I don’t love you,” that it was a giant concession for her to even think about it head-on for the first time, that she hadn’t been able to even speak about Roy, that she’d needed time and he hadn’t given it to her. But he’d needed her to meet him at least part of the way there. What if she’d just finished the sentence screaming in her head “I can’t deal with this now, I need time?” What if she hadn’t let him think “I can’t” was a full sentence? What if she hadn’t gone on autopilot and said those stupid, stupid things about “misinterpreting” their friendship, or being drunk? She’d been caught up in herself—and she had a right to be caught up in herself, what he was asking her to do was monumental—but she hadn’t thought about what that had done to him. Just because she had the right not to think of him didn’t mean she hadn’t hurt him. And it suddenly made his disappearance—his sudden flight—make so much more sense. She wasn’t there for him; he couldn’t be there for her, not to the last—not with Roy. And she had a right to her anger, sure, but he certainly had a right to his—and he’d clearly had some, given what she was hearing from the woman across from her.
Larissa nodded in response to Pam’s nod and went on, and Pam listened silently, still clutching Jim’s hand like a life preserver. “Yeah, that’s my brother in a nutshell. I’m not trying to embarrass you when I say I knew—our parents knew—Mark knew—basically everyone he talked to knew before you, but of course he couldn’t do the damn thing all of us were asking him to and tell you until a month before your wedding. I’m surprised he even managed that. So I was all prepared to resent you, a lot. But then I needed someone—Jim needed someone—and I thought of you. Thought, what if I’m wrong? What if my brother was, well, being Jim, and she just didn’t know? I owe it to her to call her. And I did. And you answered. And then I realized that I might have just made a gigantic mistake, because if there was one thing Jim had pounded into my head it was that you were getting married on June 10.”
Pam raised her head. “But I didn’t.”
Larissa smiled at her. “You didn’t. But I didn’t know that. So I thought, it’s not reasonable to expect this of her, it’s her wedding day, but you have to try. You can’t hold it against her if she doesn’t come, but you have to try. You’re already on the phone with her, you can’t take it back. So I asked. And you came. And I wanted to apologize, because I almost didn’t give you a chance to show that I was wrong. And I was wrong. You’re here, and I’m so grateful, and I needed to say all of that before…before anything else.”
Pam thought about it for a moment before smiling back at Larissa. “I’m glad you did. Because I am here, and I want to be.” She held up the hand not holding Jim’s. “That doesn’t mean I’m not mad at your brother for telling me he was in love with me and leaving the very next day. But I can’t imagine not being here for him right now, and I’m so, so grateful you let me be.”
“I can’t imagine anyone he’d rather have here. And that includes me.”
The two women exchanged smiles through tears for a moment longer. Then Larissa shook herself and raised an eyebrow. “Now, I think, it’s time for me to tell you about Larissa Halpert.”
Pam mock-bowed. “Please.”
“So, I’m afraid my story is a little less interesting than yours. I grew up here in Scranton and I went to school here too” she gestured to her Marywood shirt. “I just graduated in May from Marywood in architectural design, and I’m working right now with a contractor building houses in some of the new developments on the north side of town. It cracked me up when you said you think in colors and shapes, because I think in shapes too: arches and angles and cantilevers and so on. I’m a former lacrosse champ, though, so I also think of space in terms of action and motion: so many steps, at such and such a speed, and then a hard collision or a throw. And Pam?”
“Yes?”
“I’m not my brother. I’m pretty darn active. And I want to say—I like you. And I think we’ll have plenty of things to think about while Sleeping Beauty here,” she touched her brother’s foot “decides about joining us.”
“Thanks. That…that actually means a lot.” And Pam was surprised to realize that it did. “So, architecture, huh? Is that all on computers, or do you get to get down to the nitty gritty?”
The two of them talked for an hour about their common love of corbeled arches (“so old-school, so impractical, but so pleasing”), flying buttresses (“I really wanted to put them on the above-ground swimming pool, but my boss said no, and I kind of see his point”), and the color periwinkle (“I mean, there was a short time I hated it, and I think you might know why, but I’m really starting to dig it again now”). Neither of them forgot why they were there, and the knowledge that Jim was still unconscious weighed on them, but they were able to form a bond between them that helped each bear the load a little more easily.
